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Lake Erie’s problems were solved in the ’70s

Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoSTONE LABORATORYAlgae blooms aren’t a new problem on Lake Erie. In this photo from 1971, Dr. Jerry Hubschman uses snorkel gear to research a bloom near Put-in-Bay.

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GIBRALTAR ISLAND, Ohio — For years, Sandy Bihn and her husband, Frank, spent their summers
swimming in Maumee Bay, diving into clean water and racing their personal watercrafts over the
waves.

But then Mr. Bihn started getting ear infections, and algae started clogging their watercrafts.
So the couple built a swimming pool rather than take a risk on the lake.

And when the announcement came this month that Toledo’s water was unsafe to drink, Mrs. Bihn,
the executive director of the Lake Erie Waterkeeper advocacy group, said she was more sad than
surprised.

“We’ve kind of watched the degradation of this body of water for a long period of time,” she
said.

In fact, those who have lived in Ohio long enough — Mrs. Bihn is 67 and her husband is 66 — have
seen this play out before. Erie was dying in the late 1960s and early 1970s and came back only
after a huge effort.

Scientists, lake residents and others are saying it’s going to take a similar effort today to
save Erie. They point to Aug. 2 as a wake-up call.

Algae blooms form in Maumee Bay during the summer and spread into Erie, sometimes stretching
from Toledo to Cleveland. They can create widespread dead zones that are starved of oxygen and
cannot support any life. And they can create toxins that kill pets and sicken people.

Scientists in Ohio and elsewhere who study Erie’s algae problems say the crisis is solvable. The
first step is limiting the amount of phosphorus that reaches the lake. Once that happens, the
lake can take care of itself, cycling water in and out within about three years,
said Jeff Reutter, the director of Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory and the Ohio Sea Grant
College Program, which researches Lake Erie water issues.

• • •

In the 1960s, giant algae blooms spread across the lake, fueled by industrial pollution, sewage
and farm runoff.

Charles E. Herdendorf researched Lake Erie water quality with the Ohio Department of Natural
Resources and the Ohio Geological Survey through the 1960s and directed Stone Lab from 1973 to
1988. He said that once scientists realized that phosphorus was to blame for Erie’s problems back
then, they made a plan to fix it.

Herdendorf said researchers pushed for policies and regulations to persuade farmers to use
no-till methods on their fields, to push soapmakers to remove phosphorus from detergents and to get
money to cities and towns to improve wastewater-treatment plants to limit the amount of phosphorus
that came from sewage.

In 1972, the United States and Canada signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and both
countries agreed to cut back on the amount of phosphorus that made its way into Erie’s waters. In
the United States, that mostly meant restricting how wastewater-treatment plants dealt with sewage.
Researchers at Stone Lab and other facilities around the lake monitored phosphorus levels in Lake
Erie throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, he said, to see whether their plan was working.

“After a decade of implementation, we began to see dramatic improvements in the lake,” he
said.

But somewhere along the way, all those efforts went by the wayside, and increasing amounts of
phosphorus crept back into the lake, helping algae blooms regain a foothold.

• • •

For several years, as Erie and as many as 19 inland lakes in Ohio have been inundated with toxic
algae, scientists have said phosphorus must be cut.

As a number of efforts were introduced to educate farmers about runoff pollution and to create
voluntary measures, critics said mandates were needed.

Two weeks after algae shut down Toledo’s drinking water, the directors of three state agencies
announced they would offer more than $150 million in grants and interest-free loans to help cities
treat water for algae toxins.

Those directors also announced $1.25 million in state money to help farmers plant cover crops
and improve drainage systems to reduce the amount of fertilizer that flows from their fields into
nearby streams and rivers. That money largely comes from a federal pot of money meant to help
farmers deal with atrazine, an herbicide some farmers use to control weeds and grasses.

The state also announced it would allocate $2 million to help university researchers try to
untangle the algae problem.

Herdendorf is one of many who say that’s not enough.

“Probably for political reasons, research money is being thrown at a bunch of dispersed groups
with no overall plan or clearly defined objective,” he said. “What we need is an action plan that
gets at the heart of the problem; then put enough resources in place to solve it.”

Tory Gabriel, fisheries outreach coordinator for the Ohio Sea Grant College Program, said that
although Lake Erie is in trouble now, he does not believe that the lake is as unhealthy as it was
in the 1960s and ’70s.

On a research boat last week, Gabriel pulled sediment up from the bottom of Lake Erie and sifted
through it with his fingers.

The sediment likely contained phosphorus left by dead algae, but it also contained mayfly
larvae. That’s a good sign, he said, because fish eat the larvae. Walleye fishing this year, he
said, has been among the best in years.